High tunnels extend growing season for Portland farmers

On an acre that once held an abandoned house, garbage and blackberry vines, Givens grows culinary herbs and organic vegetables for 14 high-end Portland restaurants, runs a catering business and hosts "nomadic" suppers for like-minded chefs, foodies and other friends.

Providing such direct, on-the-ground help is an intentional policy shift by NRCS.

Since 2008, the agency has helped farmers install 139 high tunnels in Oregon, at a program cost of $830,000.

Extending the growing season in Oregon can conserve energy by perhaps reducing the amount of produce trucked into the state from California, said Dean Moberg, an NRCS basin resource conservationist for the Northern Willamette Valley and Northern Oregon Coast.

The grant program is open to all sizes of commercial food producers but specifically benefits smaller, diverse forms of agriculture that haven't benefited from USDA programs in the past, Moberg said.

Grant recipients must be involved in commercial food production; it's not for people growing nursery plants, housing livestock or sheltering machinery.